Jamais Cascio Quotes

Our massive tampering with the world's interdependent web of life—coupled with the environmental damage inflicted by deforestation, species loss, and climate change—could trigger widespread adverse effects, including unpredictable collapses of critical biological systems whose interactions and dynamics we only imperfectly understand. Uncertainty over the extent of these effects cannot excuse complacency or delay in facing the threats.

The alpine environment is very delicate. I've been able to see change in the mountains in the 20 years that I've been climbing full-time. Glaciers have receded. The tree-line is changing. That's very rapid to see nature changing in a 20-year period.

We already have the statistics for the future: the growth percentages of pollution, overpopulation, desertification. The future is already in place.

Because we're not in harmony with the environment, we're destroying the environment that supports us.

Collective human actions are transforming, even ravaging, the biosphere - perhaps irreversibly - through global warming and loss of biodiversity.

We have serious challenges regarding climate change, unsustainable use of natural resources, water scarcity, loss of biodiversity, forests and farmland. Not to mention the huge inequality still prevailing in several parts of the planet.

We cannot but feel uneasy about the losses caused by humanity themselves. Apart from the losses of life and property in destructive wars, the environment and natural resources are also being destroyed by human hands.

Our globe is under new dramatic environmental pressure: our globe is warming, our ice caps melting, our glaciers receding, our coral is dying, our soils are eroding, our water tables falling, our fisheries are being depleted, our remaining rainforests shrinking. Something is very, very wrong with our eco-system.

You know, the environment is fragmenting, and the environment is, in many places, absolutely hideous!

Yet, despite our many advances, our environment is still threatened by a range of problems, including global climate change, energy dependence on unsustainable fossil fuels, and loss of biodiversity.

Most floods are caused by man, not weather; deforestation, levee construction, erosion, and overgrazing all result in the loss of ecosystem services.

Water and air, the two essential fluids on which all life depends, have become global garbage cans.

Loads of chemicals and hazardous wastes have been introduced into the atmosphere that didn't even exist in 1948. The environmental condition of the planet is far worse than it was 42 years ago.

I think we can work through a lot of political and international problems, but what really frightens me is what's happening environmentally.

There's no longer any surprise in noting that China has grave environmental problems.

Civilization... wrecks the planet from seafloor to stratosphere.

It isn't pollution that's harming the environment. It's the impurities in our air and water that are doing it.

We are losing our environment so rapidly.

Scientists and supercomputers have amplified our ability to look ahead. For decades, experts have warned us that human numbers, technology, hyper-consumption and a global economy are altering the chemical, geological, and biological properties of the biosphere.

If you have forest, if you have green forest, the water table goes up. What happens with deforestation is the water level goes down and we all know how much importance drinking water has.

If current technological processes continue without change, the environment will change, and we, the human species, will either have to mutate or even die, to disappear, as many species have disappeared.

There are a tremendous amount of environmental issues that are on the table.

China is the world’s second largest economy, but the enormous costs of its growth are becoming apparent. Residents of its boom cities and a growing number of rural regions question the safety of the air they breathe, the water they drink and the food they eat. It is as if they were living in the Chinese equivalent of the Chernobyl or Fukushima nuclear disaster areas. The environmental hazards here are legion, and the consequences might not manifest themselves for years or even decades.

Planet Earth is far more resilient than humans and will certainly outlive us.

I think the environment is the biggest threat mankind has ever faced.